In the spring of 1918, the Spanish flu epidemic spreads, killing millions of soldiers and civilians across the globe. Overwhelmed by the constant flow of wounded soldiers coming from the French front, battlefield nurse Bess Crawford must now contend with hundreds of influenza patients as well. However, war and disease are not the only killers to strike. Bess discovers, concealed among the dead waiting for burial, the body of an officer who has been murdered.

A Bitter Truth: A Bess Crawford Mystery

When battlefield nurse Bess Crawford returns from France for a well-earned Christmas leave, she finds a bruised and shivering woman huddled in the doorway of her London residence. The woman has nowhere to turn, and propelled by a firm sense of duty, Bess takes her in.

A Question of Honor: Bess Crawford, Book 5

In the latest mystery from New York Times best-selling author Charles Todd, World War I nurse and amateur sleuth Bess Crawford investigates an old murder that occurred during her childhood in India, a search for the truth that will transform her and leave her pondering a troubling question: How can facts lie? Bess Crawford enjoyed a wondrous childhood in India, where her father, a colonel in the British Army, was stationed on the Northwest Frontier. But an unforgettable incident darkened that happy time....

An Unwilling Accomplice: Bess Crawford, Book 6

Arriving in London on leave, Bess Crawford receives an unusual summons from the War Office. She's been requested to accompany a wounded soldier to Buckingham Palace, where he's to be decorated for gallantry. Though she is certain she's never met or nursed Sergeant Jason Wilkins, she cannot refuse the honor. Heavily bandaged and confined to a wheelchair, the soldier will be in her care for barely a day. But on the morning after the ceremony when Bess goes to collect her charge for his return journey, she finds the room empty.

A Duty to the Dead: A Bess Crawford Mystery

The daughter of a distinguished soldier, Bess Crawford follows in his patriotic footsteps, volunteering to serve her country as a nurse during the Great War. In 1916 she promises Lieutenant Arthur Graham that she will carry his dying request to a brother. When Bess arrives at the Graham house in Kent, Jonathan Graham listens to his brother's last wishes with surprising indifference.

A Long Shadow: Inspector Ian Rutledge, Book 8

Scotland Yard’s Inspector Ian Rutledge brought the Great War home with him, and its horrors haunt him still. On New Year’s Eve 1919, he finds a brass cartridge casing, similar to countless others he’d seen on the battlefield, on the steps of a friend’s house. Soon there are more, purposely placed where he is sure to discover them. Unexpectedly drawn away from London to a small Northamptonshire village, he investigates the strange case of a local constable shot with a bow and arrow.

Wings of Fire: Ian Rutledge, Book 2

When reclusive war poet Olivia Marlowe and her half-brother, Nicholas Cheney, die together in their ancestral home on the Cornish coast, it looks like suicide. The grieving relatives gather together to discuss the fate of Barcombe Hall, when another shocking death occurs. Inspector Rutledge, who is still shell-shocked from his experiences in the Great War, is sent from Scotland Yard to investigate. Rutledge is soon convinced that the answers to this baffling case lie within the family’s secret history.

A Cold Treachery: Inspector Ian Rutledge, Book 7

Called out by Scotland Yard into the teeth of a violent blizzard, Inspector Ian Rutledge finds himself confronted with one of the most savage murders he has ever encountered. Rutledge might have expected such unspeakable carnage on the World War I battlefields, where he’d lost much of his soul - and his sanity - but not in an otherwise peaceful farm kitchen in remote Urskdale. Someone has murdered the Elcott family at their table without the least sign of struggle.

A False Mirror: Inspector Ian Rutledge, Book 9

An officer who served with Rutledge in the trenches of France before being sent back to England under suspicious circumstances has now been accused of savagely beating the husband of the woman he still loves. The suspect has taken the wife hostage, threatening to kill her and her maid unless Rutledge takes charge of the investigation. Although the case painfully mirrors Rutledge's own past and the love he lost to another man, he cannot refuse it.

Watchers of Time

Charles Todd brings his classic mystery series to a new level of intensity and intrigue. The year is 1919, and Ian Rutledge is a fragile yet courageous former soldier searching for his place in a post-war world. Now a Scotland Yard detective, Rutledge is called upon to probe a murder in the small Norfolk town of Osterley - but he soon discovers that the crime may be connected to one of the greatest disasters of all time…

A Fearsome Doubt

In 1912 Ian Rutledge watched as a man was condemned to hang for the murders of elderly women. Rutledge helped gather the evidence that sent Ben Shaw to the gallows. And when justice was done, Rutledge closed the door on the case. But Shaw was not easily forgotten. Now, seven years later, that grim trial returns in the form of Ben Shaw's widow Nell, bringing Rutledge evidence she is convinced will prove her husband's innocence. It's a belief fraught with peril, threatening both Rutledge's professional stature and his faith in his judgment. But there is a darker reason for Rutledge's reluctance.

A Pale Horse

Late on a spring night in 1920, five boys cross the Yorkshire dales to the ruins of Fountains Abbey, intent on raising the Devil. Instead, they stumble over the Devil himself, sitting there watching them. Terrified, they run for their lives, leaving behind a book on alchemy stolen from their schoolmaster. The next morning, a body is discovered in the cloisters of the abbey--a man swathed in a hooded cloak and wearing a gas mask.

Proof of Guilt: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery, Book 15

London, summer 1920. An unidentified body appears to have been run down by a motorcar and Ian Rutledge is leading the investigation to uncover what happened. While the signs point to murder, vital questions remain: Who is the victim? And where, exactly, was he killed? One small clue leads Rutledge to a firm built by two families, famous for producing and selling the world's best Madeira wine. Lewis French, the current head of the English enterprise, is missing. But is he the dead man? And does either his fiancée or his jilted former lover have anything to do with his disappearance - or possible death?

A Pattern of Lies: A Bess Crawford Mystery, Book 7

An explosion and fire at the Ashton Gunpowder Mill in Kent has killed over a hundred men. It's called an appalling tragedy - until suspicion and rumor raise the specter of murder. While visiting the Ashton family, Bess Crawford finds herself caught up in a venomous show of hostility that doesn't stop with Philip Ashton's arrest. Indeed, someone is out for blood, and the household is all but under siege.

Search the Dark

Dorset is the latest setting for the talents of Inspector Ian Rutledge, a veteran of the First World War still haunted, literally, by his actions. Indeed, his personal ghost only serves to complicate things as his inner doubts blend into the trauma of the case.

Legacy of the Dead: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery

The weathered remains of Eleanor Gray are found on a Scottish mountainside, and her mother, the domineering Lady Maude Gray, requires delicate treatment. This is a case that will lead Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard to Scotland, where his harrowing journey to find the truth will drag him back through the fires of his past into secrets that still have the power to kill.

A Test of Wills

Ian Rutledge returns to his career at Scotland Yard after years fighting in the First World War. Unknown to his colleagues he is still suffering from shell shock, and is burdened with the guilt of having had executed a young soldier on the battlefield for refusing to fight. A jealous colleague has learned of his secret and has managed to have Rutledge assigned to a difficult case which could spell disaster for Rutledge whatever the outcome. A retired officer has been murdered, and Rutledge goes to investigate.

Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery, Book 16

A society wedding at Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire becomes a crime scene when a man is murdered. After another body is found, the baffled local constabulary turns to Scotland Yard. Though the second crime had a witness, her description of the killer is so strange it's unbelievable. Despite his experience, Inspector Ian Rutledge has few answers of his own. The victims are so different that there is no rhyme or reason to their deaths. Nothing logically seems to connect them - except the killer. As the investigation widens, a clear suspect emerges. But for Rutledge, the facts still don't add up, leaving him to question his own judgment.

A Matter of Justice: Inspector Ian Rutledge Mysteries

After two London men end their business partnership, one of them is savagely murdered in a medieval tithe barn on his estate in Somerset. Investigating the killing, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge discovers that the victim was universally despised in Cambury - even the victim's wife and the town's police inspector are suspect. And yet in London circles, the man was highly regarded. What triggered his death?

A Lonely Death: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery

Three men have been murdered in a Sussex village, and Scotland Yard has been called in. It's a baffling case. The victims are soldiers who survived the horrors of the Great War only to meet a ghastly end in the quiet English countryside two years later. Each had been garroted, with small ID disks left in their mouths. But even Scotland Yard's presence doesn't deter this vicious and clever killer.

A Fine Summer's Day: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery

On a fine summer's day in June, 1914, Ian Rutledge pays little notice to the assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo. An Inspector at Scotland Yard, he is planning to propose to the woman whom he deeply loves, despite intimations from friends and family that she may not be the wisest choice.

The Confession: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery

Declaring he needs to clear his conscience, a dying man walks into Scotland Yard and confesses that he killed his cousin five years earlier during the Great War. When Inspector Ian Rutledge presses for details, the man evades his questions, revealing only that he hails from a village east of London. With little information and no body to open an official inquiry, Rutledge begins to look into the case on his own. Less than two weeks later, the alleged killer’s body is found floating in the Thames, a bullet in the back of his head.

The Red Door: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery

June 1920. In a house with a red door lies the body of a woman who has been bludgeoned to death. Rumor has it that two years earlier, she'd painted that door to welcome her husband back from the Front - only he never came home. Meanwhile, in London, a man suffering from a mysterious illness first goes missing and then just as suddenly reappears. He is unable to explain his recovery. Inspector Ian Rutledge must solve the cases.

The Walnut Tree: A Holiday Tale

In 1914, while visiting her friend Madeleine, Lady Elspeth Douglas's life is thrown into chaos when war breaks out and the Germans quickly overrun Belgium, threatening France. Having just agreed to marry Alain, Madeleine's dashing brother, Lady Elspeth watches him leave to join his unit, and then she sets out for England, only to find herself trapped on the French coast.

Who Buries the Dead: Sebastian St. Cyr, Book 10

The vicious decapitation of Stanley Preston, a wealthy, socially ambitious plantation owner, at Bloody Bridge draws Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, into a macabre and increasingly perilous investigation. The discovery near the body of an aged lead coffin strap bearing the inscription King Charles, 1648 suggests a link between this killing and the beheading of the deposed seventeenth-century Stuart monarch.

Publisher's Summary

World War I nurse and amateur sleuth Bess Crawford matches wits with a devious killer in this exciting and suspenseful adventure from New York Times best-selling author Charles Todd.

In the spring of 1918, the Spanish flu epidemic spreads, killing millions of soldiers and civilians across the globe. Overwhelmed by the constant flow of wounded soldiers coming from the French front, battlefield nurse Bess Crawford must now contend with hundreds of influenza patients as well.

However, war and disease are not the only killers to strike. Bess discovers, concealed among the dead waiting for burial, the body of an officer who has been murdered. Though she is devoted to all her patients, this soldier's death touches her deeply. Not only did the man serve in her father's former regiment, he was also a family friend.

Before she can report the terrible news, Bess falls ill, the latest victim of the flu. By the time she recovers, the murdered officer has been buried, and the only other person who saw the body has hanged himself. Or did he?

Working her father's connections in the military, Bess begins to piece together what little evidence she can find to unmask the elusive killer and see justice served. But she must be as vigilant as she is tenacious. With a determined killer on her heels, each move Bess makes could be her last.

This mystery is set against the background of WW I 1918. The war has dragged on for several years, losses have been huge for both sides, men are being gassed, and then the pandemic of the 1918 flu is killing people globally. Bess and the other nurses are hard pressed to handle the wounded and now the sick. Soldiers are dying so quickly in France that they are being buried in pits. But one day Bess is called into the room where the bodies are held because an orderly has found a body that did not belong to that unit, with no identifying clothes, and who hadn’t died of the flu. In fact, his neck was broken and he was murdered. Bess knew the man, a family friend who served with her father. She arranged for the orderly to hold back the trucks which took the bodies away, and Bess went off to find the matron to decide what to do. But Bess fell ill with the flu, and was delirious for several days. The nightmare of seeing the murdered man came back to her in a dream. When she finally recovered, she didn’t know if it was a dream or had happened. But then, she learned that the orderly who had also seen the body had, seemingly committed suicide. She instantly believed he was murdered. Bess enlisted the aid of Simon and her father and others to track down this murderer, and her own life was almost taken several times. This was an exciting book, each one in the series has gotten better and better. Landor is a particularly good narrator, especially for no-nonsense nurse Bess Crawford.

I would definitely recommend this audiobook to a friend especially if that friend likes mysteries and has an interest in World War I. The characters and the plot were interesting as well as the details about the time and the people living through WWI.

What other book might you compare An Unmarked Grave to and why?

Any of the other Charles Todd books that deal with the same time period. The other series that comes to mind is the Inspector Foyle programs on PBS. They deal with a changing society during the two World Wars and the changing role for women in that society.

What about Rosalyn Landor’s performance did you like?

She portrayed the characters very well and was extremely easy to listen to.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I loved the end of the book when Bess Crawford was able to give the murdered soldier's family the comfort in knowing that he had not committed suicide and restored his honour.

What made the experience of listening to An Unmarked Grave the most enjoyable?

I have read or listened to all of Charles Todd's books and I especially like the character of plucky WWI nurse Bess Crawford. The reader put me right in the front lines of caring for the wounded.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

I douldn't put it down and wore my MP3 player all day till I finished it! Charles Todd always has lots of plot twists and turns which are not predictable.One minute Bess is fighting for her life with the Spanish influenza the next,she is nearly killed at the front.

Which character – as performed by Rosalyn Landor – was your favorite?

Bess

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Thank goodness it wasn't a 3 parter. I had to know what happened next and despite having read or listened to all of Todd's books, I couldn't guess what was going to happen next.

Any additional comments?

For fans of period murder mysteries and strong female characters, I highly recomment it

A wonderful story of wartime hardship with a Downton Abbey feel. A nurse discovers an inner strength that she would never have known apart from the stark ruthlessness of her own illness and the First World War. From a privileged military family in Britain, the heroin determines to return to France to serve the wounded after having, herself, survived the Spanish Flu pandemic that rivaled the war in numbers of fatalities. There is intrigue coupled with valor. This is a tribute to the strength and determination of women. It was hard to put down. Well narrated, I highly recommend this easy listen.

I'm a fan of Bess Crawford. She's a strong woman and always strives for justice and right.

This is the 4th Bess Crawford mystery from Charles Todd and it did not disappoint.

I listened to the audio book narrated by the excellent Rosalyn Landor. Her voice is subtle with very good accents. Her strength is in her ability to do men's voices so well that I almost forget there is not a man reading those parts. The American man in this book was voiced extremely well.

I do have a few quibbles, including a weak ending, but they are spoilerish so I won't share them here.

Though both are written well, I've enjoyed Todd's Bess Crawford mystery series more than the Inspector Ian Rutledge series. Both take place during or just after WWI, which is an absolutely fascinating time period. It's obvious that Todd has done quite a bit of historical research on the war, which certainly adds to each stories' atmosphere.

The plots might sometimes be a bit of a stretch, but they have enough truth and "believability" so that I've always really enjoyed them.

The characters are the best part. They are so well developed, they're the reason I've gone through the whole Crawford series. After I'd used my Audible credit on the first book and finished it, I instantly purchased the second book so that I wouldn't have to wait a whole month to see how each character's subplots progressed.

The narrator's voice sounds a bit too cold for me at times, but again, each character's personality is very strongly written so that towards the end I wasn't bothered by it.

I thoroughly recommend this book. If you want your characters a bit darker, I suggest the Rutledge series as well.

Charles Todd does not disapoint in the 4th book of the "Bess Crawford" series. Rosalyn Landor has done a fantastic job in reading ALL the books in the series. I hope they continue to use her as the series progresses. She really brings the characters to life!

I first 'discovered' him with the Ian Rutledge series and I keep hoping some more ofthe earlier books will be on audible.com. He has mayhem, of course, and the voice in his head, but Todd has a wonderful way with the English language

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

Now I see what an awful critic I am since I have listened to other audible bookssince "An Marked Grave'!!

Have you listened to any of Rosalyn Landor???s other performances before? How does this one compare?

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